There isnt a lot of instructions for how to install Torrus on FreeBSD. Fortunately there is a port, which is how i found Torrus in the first place.

Torrus is a monitoring framework in the spirit of Cricket - but unlike Cricket, people are actually maintaining it. It supports a large number of devices and works with either modperl1 or modperl2.

I will quickly step through whats needed to get things going. Everything else is available in Torrus' documentation...

1. Install & update ports,
2. Install apache2+modperl2 (ill assume that you can work that out)
3. Make Torrus with mod perl 2 support (unfortunately this port doesnt do make config)

cd /usr/ports/net-mgmt/torrus
WITH_MOD_PERL=2 make
WITH_MOD_PERL=2 make install

for reference, the files installed can easily be listed with

pkg_info -L 'torrus*'

4. Edit sample configs

cd /usr/local/etc/torrus/conf
cp torrus-siteconfig.pl.sample torrus-siteconfig.pl


Turn off ACLs and auth access (turn on later if you want)

vi torrus-siteconfig.pl

add this line

$Torrus::ApacheHandler::authorizeUsers = 0;

5. Copy more sample configs to proper configs

cd /usr/local/etc/torrus/xmlconfig
cp site-global.xml.sample site-global.xml  

6. Apache config, this is the lines youll need. Look elsewhere for apache details if you arent familiar with apache configuration. I set up a new vhost and included the following...

vi /usr/local/etc/apache22/Includes/torrus.conf

Alias /torrus/plain "/usr/local/share/torrus/sup/webplain"
      PerlRequire "/usr/local/share/torrus/conf_defaults/webmux2.pl"
     
        SetHandler modperl
        PerlResponseHandler Torrus::Apache2Handler
     
     
        SetHandler default-handler
        Options None
     

7. Restart apache...

/usr/local/etc/rc.d/apache22 restart

8. Add cleanup to crontab

echo "5    3    *    *     *       root    /usr/local/libexec/torrus/cleanup" | crontab -


9. Add some devices...

/usr/local/libexec/torrus/genddx --host=172.29.0.253:switchy --subtree="/main" --out=switch.ddx --version=2c --community=public --holtwinters